is the subject of this article in BioNews. I completely disagree with this author, on every point except that we shouldn’t abuse childless women. Other than that, well, look for yourself to see if you think this person is coherent.
Faith groups (and I am a member of one) have a poor, at times appalling, record of abusing childless women. Made to suffer for and keep secret the fertility problems of their menfolk, it is a human rights issue and it is right in our midst. Colluding with secrecy is not the answer. …There is no returning to a mythical golden age in which donors donated and patients were inseminated and everyone was told to carry on as if nothing had happened. Obviously if donor insemination is viewed as adultery, then it is unlikely to be worth the emotional cost of undergoing the procedure. Alternatively, we owe it to childless women, under social pressure from their communities to keep gamete donation a secret, to engage in discussions about how to destigmatise infertility and DI.
I completely disagree with this. We should not “destigamatize DI.” We should not allow donor insemination. Period. Not to married women. Not to unmarried women. Not anonymously. Not with full disclosure. Of course, we should not allow the abuse of infertile women. (I wonder what she is actually calling ‘abuse’ here.) But the truth is that no one has a “right” to have a child. Infertility is not a human rights issue. Deliberately separating children from their biological origins IS a human rights issue.
I went through the infertility experience. Don’t try to guilt-trip me about this. I know the pain. It is awful. But that doesn’t change the other realities involved here. Bringing a third party into a marriage through gamete donation really is a harm to the marriage. Deliberatly bringing a child into the world in complete separation from one of his or her parents really is an injustice to the child. All the talk in this article is tap dancing around the main subject: we are pretending to have an individual, personal “right” to have a child, when no such right exists. Having a child is intrinsically a social act, since it involves the other parent, and the child him or herself. DI, and indeed, the Artificial Reproductive Technology industry, is turning the social act of procreation into an individual act of re-production. Children should be begotten, not made.